Harris focuses on migration during Mexico trip

Vice President Kamala Harris said the administration will continue to work to reunite families that were separated at the US-Mexico border under President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy.

Harris did not answer whether the administration might support a pathway to US citizenship for separated families, instead saying work must continue to try and reunify those families.

A new report from the Department of Homeland Security said the administration is preparing to reunite 29 migrant families who were separated at the US-Mexico border, though it contained few new details on the Trump-era separations known to have occurred between July 2017 and January 2021, many of which have been subject to ongoing litigation.

“And the way that policy was carried out, when it was carried out, and now we’re coming in after it happened, is we’ve got to locate people. We’ve got to find people, literally find people, and we cannot give up on that and it’s going to take a lot of work but that work is worth it. And we’ll continue to do it. We’ll continue to do it,” Harris added.

Officials have repeatedly underscored the hurdles in identifying and reuniting separated families as a result of the lack of documentation and of errors in the files.

“In the files the task force accessed, we found numerous errors and misinformation,” a DHS official told reporters Monday, citing wrong dates, repeated cases and name confusions. “There were accounts of children being mismatched or matched to the wrong adult. And again, this is really a reflection of the lack of tracking and record-keeping at the time.”

Vice President Kamala Harris said she will visit the US southern border, but emphasized the importance of addressing the root cause of migration instead of only being reactionary.

“The reality is we need to prioritize what’s happening at the border and we have to prioritize why people are going to the border,” she said. Harris said that she has “spent a lot of time on the border both going there, physically, and aware of the issues.”

Harris said helping fix the challenges people are facing in Guatemala and Mexico is the approach the Biden administration is taking to migration.

“If you want a deal with the effects of a problem, then you have to go to the core of what is causing it,” she said.

Some context: Harris has fielded criticism from both Democrats and Republicans over her choice not to visit the US-Mexico border since her role on immigration was announced, and her reactions when asked about that decision.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a press conference at the Sofitel Mexico City Reforma in Mexico City on June 8.

Vice President Kamala Harris explained today why she chose Mexico and Guatemala as her first foreign trip – and why she traveled to the countries before visiting the southern border – saying, “if you want to address the needs of a people, you must meet those people.”

“I want to be very clear that the problem at the border in large part, if not entirely, stems from the problems in these countries,” Harris told reporters in Mexico City on Tuesday. “I cannot say it enough. Most people don’t want to leave home.”

Harris continued, saying if migration is a priority for the US, “we have to understand. If it is a priority to us to be concerned about what is happening at our border, then it must be a priority for us to understand why people leave.”

Harris has fielded criticism from both Democrats and Republicans over her choice not to visit the US-Mexico border since her role on immigration was announced, and her reactions when asked about that decision.

Vice President Kamala Harris said that one of the themes that stood out during her trip to Mexico City was global interconnectivity and that “what happens abroad matters to the United States.”

Following her meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday, Harris said that “we are entering a new era around the globe,” adding that the issues that affect one country, impacts other countries around the world.

Harris also met with local leaders and entrepreneurs. She said the United States should work with other countries to help fix problems that are causing people to migrate.

Vice President Kamala Harris is delivering remarks in Mexico, where she spent the day meeting with the Mexican president, women entrepreneurs and labor leaders.

Earlier today, Harris said she talked to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador about “our shared interest in security, vaccines and the pandemic, what we need to do on the issue of migration,” and “mutual interests in economic strength and security,” when the two leaders met in Mexico City today.

Harris also appeared frustrated by the repeated questioning of her absence at the border. 

Asked by a reporter in Mexico City why she has not gone to the US southern border as part of her role in leading diplomatic efforts to stem the flow of migration, Harris said, “Listen, I’ve been to the border before, I will go again.” 

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks during an interview on June 8.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reiterated the administration’s message to migrants considering coming to the US-Mexico border: Do not come. 

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Mayorkas warned migrants not to make the journey north, echoing Vice President Kamala Harris’ message in Guatemala this week.

“The message is do not come. Do not come irregularly. It is paralysis and too often, the journey results in tragic consequences. What we’re saying is do not come. We’re building back our lawful processes, so people do not have to take the perilous journey,” Mayorkas said. 

“Do not come because we’re doing so much to bring relief to you in a safe, orderly and humane way as the President has outlined,” he added. Harris, who visited Mexico Tuesday, faced criticism from progressives for urging migrants not to come to the US.

Days before her trip to Latin America, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to the leaders of Guatemala and Mexico to relay the administration’s decision to include their countries in the first allocation of 25 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines. Eighty million will be shared globally by the end of June, the White House has said.

It’s a welcome announcement for Central America, where Covid-19 cases and deaths have soared. But it only addresses one part of a tangled web of issues. The pandemic, coupled with the devastation wreaked by two major hurricanes last year, exacerbated long-standing issues in the region. The Congressional Research Service projected the decline in economic growth in 2020 would worsen income inequality and poverty in the region.

A key challenge in addressing those issues will be navigating the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, all of which face varying governance issues.

In January, for example, US federal prosecutors said Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández helped an alleged drug trafficker deliver thousands of kilos of cocaine to the United States in exchange for hefty bribes — a claim the Honduran presidency rejected as “100% false.”

Harris has publicly called out El Salvador, singling out the Parliament that recently dismissed the attorney general and top judges as undermining its nation’s highest court, but she’s not yet called the leaders of El Salvador and Honduras.

Senior staff members said Harris would try to deepen the United States’ “strategic partnership and bilateral relationship” with Guatemala and Mexico during her trip. She’s expected to sign agreements with each country focused on border security, corruption and on advancing economic opportunity, Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, told Voice of America.

A White House official said Harris is also expected to discuss the next round of funding for Northern Triangle countries on the trip, after announcing in April that the US would send $310 million in humanitarian aid.

One of the diplomatic challenges for Harris in Mexico, the country she is visiting today, is how she will strengthen the administration’s relationship with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — who built a strong alliance with former President Trump — and whether she will broach the alarming level of violence in that country when they meet. Since last September, at least 88 politicians or candidates for office have been killed, according to Mexican consulting firm Etellekt Consultores. The motives behind the killings are unclear, but many are believed to be linked to organized crime and the fight for territorial control.

While she has spent the past few weeks trying to get up to speed quickly on a broad array of issues, she acknowledged last week that she hadn’t had as much time as she would have liked to brush up on her Spanish before the trip.

“One of my regrets is that I’m not fluent in Spanish,” she said. “I will have my conversations in English so as not to embarrass myself.”

Read more about Harris’ trip to Guatemala and Mexico here.

When asked by a reporter in Mexico City why she has not gone to the US southern border as part of her role in leading diplomatic efforts to stem the flow of migration, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “Listen, I’ve been to the border before, I will go again.” 

Harris appeared frustrated by the repeated questioning of her absence at the border.  

“When I’m in Guatemala, dealing with root causes, I think we should have a conversation about what’s going on in Guatemala,” she added.

The vice president has been on the defensive for a sizable portion of her two-day trip to Guatemala and Mexico, rejecting criticism on why she hasn’t gone to visit the border as part of her role.

In an interview that took place in Guatemala during Harris’ first foreign trip since taking office, NBC’s Lester Holt reminded Harris she has not been to the border. 

“I, and I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t – I don’t understand the point that you’re making,” Harris said with a laugh. She added, “I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”

In a brief gaggle with traveling reporters Tuesday, Harris said the questions on the security of the border are legitimate but should share the equal weight with a focus on the root cause issues.

Asked if she was concerned the message of root causes of migration aren’t getting through, at least in the US, because of the questions of the border, Harris said, “I think it’s a great question to ask.”

“And so, the work that we are doing by being in Guatemala yesterday, in Mexico today, is the work of reinforcing the point that we have to look at not only what is actually happening at the border, but what is causing that to happen. And so that is about one having direct conversations with heads of state, the president of Guatemala and the president of Mexico which I’ve had now in the last 24 hours, to have a one-on-one conversation to eyeball each other and to say, look, let’s speak honestly,” Harris added. 

Still Harris pushed back, saying, “but you can’t say you care about the border without caring about the root causes, without caring about the acute causes, which include the fact that you’re looking at populations, particularly from Central America, who are plagued by hunger and the devastation caused by the hurricanes and of course, the effect of the pandemic. So, let’s, let’s approach this in a way that acknowledges there are many factors.”

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to the media on June 8 at the Sofitel Mexico City Reforma in Mexico City.

Vice President Kamala Harris said she talked to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador about “our shared interest in security, vaccines and the pandemic, what we need to do on the issue of migration,” and “mutual interests in economic strength and security,” when the two leaders met in Mexico City today.

During an unscheduled statement to the press pool, Harris said she made clear that the US considers Mexico to be a “partner on many of these issues,” and that the countries have agreed to combine “resources targeted at Central America and in particular the countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.”

She also announced that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas will travel to Mexico City next week to “follow up on the conversations we’ve had today.”

Vice President Kamala Harris left for Latin America on Sunday under intense political pressure to stem the flow of migrants to the US, with lots of people asking what she was doing heading out on her first foreign trip as vice president before releasing a comprehensive strategy.

The answer, according to people close to her, is that she’s putting in the leg work to help inform the administration’s strategy — and her own — for dealing with the tough assignment she’s been handed.

Harris’ critics have questioned her credentials for this portfolio, but she has dealt with immigration and human trafficking issues — as well as efforts to root out transnational organized crime — throughout her various roles in government. And she brings an unusual perspective to the vice president’s office, coming from a border state that has welcomed immigrants and passed laws to protect undocumented immigrations from federal immigration officials.

One of the first trips she took as attorney general of California was to Calexico to tour a drug smuggling tunnel along the California-Mexico border. In 2014, she led a bipartisan delegation of state attorneys general to Mexico, striking an agreement with leaders there to enhance information-sharing on the activities of transnational gangs and participate in joint training sessions on money laundering.

While trying to forge collaborations with those partners, she was “obsessed” with ensuring they understood that she was talking “with them,” and “not to them,” said Jeff Tsai, who was one of Harris’ closest advisers when he worked as special assistant attorney general of California between 2013 and 2015.

Harris also believed that one of her greatest strengths as attorney general was the “power to convene” – the ability to summon people with disparate interests into one room to solve a problem when she had limited government resources to spare. She used that approach in 2014, when she dialed up the managing partners at some of the biggest law firms in the country asking them to send representatives to a meeting at her office. She and her team helped pair up these representatives with immigrant advocacy groups to expand the legal representation of unaccompanied minors from Central America who were streaming across the border.

One former adviser recalled how she persuaded lawyers assembled in her office to commit to a certain number of hours of pro bono work by walking them through the harrowing experience those children had coming across the border alone — which she had learned about firsthand during visits with advocacy groups — and then laid out “the very stark differences in outcome for those children who have representation and those who don’t.”

Read more about Harris’ trip to Guatemala and Mexico here.